


When The Wind Blows

by justanorthernlight



Series: The Sum of Our Tears [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 17:23:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6088141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanorthernlight/pseuds/justanorthernlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the escape from Bespin, Luke struggles to come to terms with his father's revelation. A mission with Rogue Squadron goes wrong and leads him back to Tatooine, and Leia back into the hands of Darth Vader.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When The Wind Blows

_“Ben, why didn’t you tell me?”_

He wasn’t sure whether he’d spoken aloud or if the words only existed in his mind, ricocheting around like blaster bolts. All he knew was that there was no response.

Slumped in the navigator’s seat in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, Luke felt the dark weight of Vader’s presence wrapped around him like a cloak. Harsh mechanical breathing hung heavy in his mind.

_Ben!_

Leia and Lando worked frantically at the controls. Luke couldn’t summon the strength to tell them that it was pointless, that nothing could escape the well of darkness Vader was projecting around the ship.

_Son, come to me._

No.

_It is your destiny._

The view of the stars outside the cockpit changed abruptly from pinpricks to streaks, then to the churning blue tunnel of hyperspace. Agony lanced through Luke’s mind as something was ripped away, something soft and small and fragile. He screamed, even as that part of himself fell away like his severed hand had, into the abyss of darkness from which they fled.

Breathless with pain, he reached for it. The dark, foggy tendrils remained just out of his reach even as bright lights scorched him. He was lost, adrift in a sea of light and shadow that shifted around him like the sand dunes of Tatooine. Even as he tried to orient himself on the darkness it receded. He strained for it and felt _stretched,_ like a cord about to snap. Still, he couldn’t reach it. The brightest light was at his back, the only distinguishing feature in this morass of shadows. His tether.

Whatever it was that he had lost was gone. He steeled himself to the pain and reoriented on the blinding speck of light.

He moved towards it.

A gentle hand patted his cheek.

He opened his eyes and the light disappeared, replaced by Leia’s concerned brown eyes.

“Can you hear me?” She asked. She sounded like she had been repeating herself for some time. “Luke.” She shook his shoulder.

His head lolled. Keeping it in place was too much effort. He blinked languidly, drinking in her beautiful, concerned eyes.

_She wouldn’t be so concerned if she knew the truth._

The thought broke over him like ice water. He started violently. His head snapped back against the seat’s padded back. His arms and legs flailed. The stump of his right wrist, encased in a heavy metal sleeve to preserve and protect the exposed vessels, met solid resistance. Leia cried out and lurched back. Chewie howled and lunged between them to seize Luke’s arm with one mighty paw.

Luke let out a short, choked whimper and tried to curl his limbs back into a ball.

“Leia!”  

“I’m alright.” She said. Her voice sounded thick and nasal.     

“Oh _kriff,_ I’m sorry! Are you okay? I’m sorry!” The words spilled from him in a torrent. Tears ran unheeded down his face.    

“Take it easy, Luke.” Leia pushed Chewie aside gently. A raised red welt was forming on her cheek and nose. “It’s alright.”     

“No it isn’t.” Didn’t she understand? It would never be alright again. His father was a monster –he knew it with a gut-rending certainty despite his denials and hadn’t people said all his life that Luke had too much of his father in him?- his father had hurt her and now Luke was following in those footsteps. His breathing accelerated to near hyperventilation.

_His father his father his father-_

“Take it easy, Luke.” Leia murmured. She rested one hand on his knee and the other on his shoulder and rubbed in comforting circles. “Deep breaths.”

Luke struggled to comply. His muscles twitched with the aftermath of strain and adrenaline.

_Ben, why didn’t you tell me?_

Eventually, the shakes subsided and his breathing evened back out. “It isn’t okay.” He whispered, looking her in the eye. 

“Okay,” She replied softly. “It isn’t okay right now, but it will be. Come on, let’s get you back to bed.”

Luke nodded and allowed her and Chewie to help him to his feet and guide him slowly back to the Falcon’s first-aid bunk.

 

*

While Chewbacca and the Princess tended to Skywalker, Lando retreated to the Falcon’s cramped galley and pulled out a datapad. Han’s bounty was still listed as claimed/pending, an encouraging sign. Lando tucked it away again and began preparing something to eat. The coming conversation was going to be unpleasant under any circumstances, there was no reason to have it on an empty stomach.

At least the galley was fully stocked, and with better fare than Han’s usual supply of freeze-dried ration packs. His people had done well with both the repairs and the resupply, he noted with pride. He wondered how many of them made it off of Cloud City, and how many of the ones that hadn’t were still alive.

A day late and a credit short whatever the answer.

He’d had no choice, he’d told himself and repeated it like a mantra from the moment the Super Star Destroyer _Executer_ had come out of hyperspace. Vader could have blasted the entire floating city to pieces and killed everyone on it with the twitch of a finger. A constant Stormtrooper presence would have been almost as bad. In the game of lives, what was one rebel the Empire was going catch eventually against the entire population of Cloud City? What were the lives of a pair of two-bit smugglers and the Princess against the thousands of beings just trying to scrape by in peace?

And while he had no love for the Empire, his duty to the people of Cloud City outweighed his sympathy for the rebellion. Handing Skywalker over was the best possible option, and he’d truly believed that Vader would have let Han, Chewie, and Leia stay in peace.

Vader had suckered him in and strung him along with that initial promise, then chipped away at the promised reward (Han’s safety, Leia and Chewie’s safety, Cloud City’s safety) until there was nothing left to lose.

But wallowing in guilt and indecision would get nowhere. He picked up the tray and took it out into the passenger lounge.

The Princess sat slumped over the dejarik table, her expression drawn with weariness. Chewie and the droids were nowhere in sight. Lando set the tray on the table and poured her a mug of tea, then sat across from her. She straightened and regarded him coldly, ignoring the tea and tray of food.

“How’s Skywalker?” He asked.

She considered him for a long moment. “Stable, for now. Chewie and I have done all we can with first aid, and he’s resting. We’ll rendezvous with the Alliance fleet in about twenty hours. The doctors there will help him.” She leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. “Which leaves me about nineteen hours to decide what to do with you.” 

Lando summoned his best salesman grin, then added just the right touch of smarminess to draw a reaction. “Well, your Highness, I have a few suggestions on that subject.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, drawing a disgusted scoff from the Princess. But he was too tired to maintain the charade, so he sobered and slid the datapad to her across the small table.

She read it carefully, then looked up at him, her eyes tight. “Given your actions earlier I wouldn’t have taken you as the type to gloat.”

“Boba Fett is a professional, and in his line of work professional means paranoid. He’s notified Jabba that he’s captured Han, but Fett will demand half-payment at a neutral location before delivery, and Jabba will send an agent with it to verify that Fett really has Han. That’s our best chance to rescue him. Once he’s inside of one of Jabba’s palaces it will be nearly impossible to get him out. Those things are fortresses.”

“So you propose that we locate this meeting and swoop in and rescue him.” The Princess said, her voice carefully neutral.

“It’s where there will be the least security. It’s our best chance.”

“There’s only one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“You said ‘we’.”

Lando was prepared for that. “I know the Hutts and their little corner of the underworld well. I have contacts and resources-“

“I have contacts and resources as well.” The Princess cut him off. “Or do you really think Han is the only scoundrel on the Alliance’s payroll? You, on the other hand, _had_ a city, and you were quick enough to betray us in exchange for its independence before. And that independence would be a small reward in exchange for the location of the Alliance fleet.”

“You know as well as I do that any independence is too much for the Empire to bear.” Lando replied quietly. Alderaan had flaunted its status and history, used it to legitimize its frequent criticism of the Empire.

Her jaw tightened. “That still doesn’t mean I need you.”

A low, threatening rumble of Shyriiwook came from behind him. Chewbacca had returned at some point during their conversation and leaned silently against a bulkhead near the corridor that led to the cockpit.

“What did he say?” The Princess asked.

Lando considered lying, but the Wookie barred his fangs at and snarled in a way that didn’t translate into words.

“He said that you should throw me in an escape pod and forget about me.”

“Funny, I was thinking out an airlock without a suit.” Leia muttered.

Lando managed to contain his wince. “Look, you have soldiers and spies at your command, but I’d wager they’re mostly focused on the Empire, not the Hutt cartels, and it will take them time to gather information and develop contacts I already have. We’re working with a limited time frame. Besides, can they really spare the distraction?”

He saw her waver for just a moment and pressed on. “I may not be your only hope, but I am certainly your best hope.”

The anger went out of her abruptly, leaving only exhaustion and despair. She slumped against the back of the bench and closed her eyes.

“Mark my words, Baron Calrissian, if you betray us again you won’t live long enough to enjoy any reward.”

“Han was my friend too, whatever else happened between us.”

“Is. He’s not dead yet.”

*

Chewie and the droids finished sweeping the ship and found no homing beacon or tracking device. Leia tried to relax. There was nothing more she could do until their rendezvous with the fleet, so she busied herself with checking on Luke periodically and then roping Lando into helping her prepare an evening meal while Chewie made their last hyperspace jump. It would take all of the ship’s night cycle and most of the morning to reach the interstellar space above the galactic plane that Admiral Ackbar had set as their emergency rendezvous point.

Luke was quiet and withdrawn during the meal, but the strange fit he’d had during the jump to hyperspace seemed to have passed. The bruises on his face had deepened to a sickly purple, and he struggled using his utensils with only his left hand. The stump of his right he kept tucked close to his body. As soon as he finished eating he retired to the starboard passenger cabin with a mumbled excuse of exhaustion. When Lando and Chewie began discussing Nar Shadda and information brokers Leia mirrored his actions and retreated to Han’s cabin.

Their cabin, for most of the two-month trek from Hoth to Bespin.

Leia sealed the hatch behind her and had to choke back a sudden, unexpected rush of tears.

Han’s jacket lay folded carefully on the narrow bunk.

He had used it as a pillow during their captivity and hadn’t put it on that morning (was it really only that morning?) in their cell. Chewie must have grabbed it and stuck it in the sack with Threepio and returned it to Han’s cabin.

So he would have it when he came back.

Leia took a slow deep breath. In, out. In, out. She would not cry.

She hadn’t cried in the carbon chamber when Han was torn from her and lowered in, or when his frozen form was lifted out. She hadn’t cried at Chewie’s howl of rage and grief or in relief when Lando announced Han was still alive. She wouldn’t do it now.

She wouldn’t.

Except her eyes overflowed when she squeezed them shut, and tears ran down her cheeks to drip from her chin. Her measured breaths caught in her chest and turned to suppressed, hiccupping sobs. She threw herself down onto the bunk fully clothed and buried her face in her hands, giving in to grief. Eventually her tears ran out and she fell into a fitful sleep.

The nightmares, when they came, were the familiar mix of childhood terrors and the adult horrors she’d witnessed over the years, blended through the distortions of dreamscape.

_An invisible hand gripped her throat, not yet squeezing but keeping her from running. The shiny black sphere of the interrogation droid floated closer and closer. Light glinted off the needle and fire coursed through her veins- an aftereffect of the drugs even though the needle had yet to pierce her skin. The sphere grew, expanded to the size of the moon, the size of the Death Star, and floated up high in the sky. She could see where she was now, a familiar terrace in the Alderaanian royal palace. It was part of the residential section, she’d sat there with her parents and friends on countless occasions. It was the best place for watching the sun set behind the mountains and caught wonderful cool breezes off of the lake in the summer. The interrogation droid hung malevolently in the sky, its needle pointed down directly at them._

_Belatedly, Leia realized her parents were there as well, standing on opposite sides of the terrace, reaching for each other. A beam of green light erupted from the needle and the tiles beneath Leia’s feet began to boil. Bail and Breha reached for each other, their mouths opening in silent screams. Leia watched, still frozen by the grip on her throat. The bubbling, burning ground sent up sparks that caught the hem of Breha’s gown, and Bail’s cloak. They were both burning, sinking in the twisting lava. Still, they reached for each other, never to hold each other again._

_Cold blue eyes bored into her, and the hand on her throat began to squeeze, cutting off her air. The eyes flickered, becoming Luke’s, then Han’s, then her father’s, then the implacable black mask of Darth Vader. She wanted to scream, to cry, to run but she couldn’t move and the hand squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until-_

She woke gasping, a wordless cry spilling from her lips. Fresh tears cut tracks in the salt that had dried on her face. She struggled out of the blankets that had wound their way around her legs and pushed herself to her feet. She stalked out of the cabin and down the curving main corridor to the Falcon’s tiny ‘fresher. She turned the sink taps on as cold as they would go and stuck her head under the stream. The water soaked her braids and the back of her jumpsuit, and cooled her heated skin. She stayed there for a full minute as her breathing steadied. Eventually she pulled back, allowing her soaked hair to drip on the floor. She filled the cup that sat next to the sink and gulped it down, then a second. The third she drank more slowly. She stripped out of her boots, jumpsuit, and underthings and shoved the clothes into the small sonic laundry unit. Her bruised ribs ached as she stretched carefully. She undid her sodden braids and spent a long time brushing her hair out, before re-braiding it into a crown around her head. By the time she finished her clothes were clean. She redressed and wandered out into the ship.

It was the middle of the night cycle. Artoo and Threepio sat powered down and charging in the passenger lounge. Chewie had promised to keep the night watch. Leia hesitated at the junction that led to the cockpit, but continued on. She stopped again in front of the hatch to the starboard-side passenger cabin.

By all rights Luke should be asleep. He needed the rest and it would be rude to wake him to assuage her own restlessness. She raised her hand and knocked gently on the door.

“Come in,” Luke called immediately, no trace of sleep in his voice.

The lights were on and he was sitting up on the narrow bunk, wrestling with the straps of his boots. He paused and grinned sheepishly up at her when she stopped just inside the doorway.

“Want some help?” She asked.

“Please. I never realized how hard it is to unbuckle something with just one hand.” He made room for her on the bunk and she sat next to him, taking his left foot in her hands. She made short work of the buckles and pulled it off, dropping it next to the bunk. He shifted position and she did the same with his right.

“Thank you.” He sighed and twisted around to sit with his back against the bulkhead, socked feet dangling over the edge of the bunk. Leia mirrored his movements and leaned into his shoulder, their thighs pressed together and hands brushing. “We’ll find Han.” He said after a long stretch of companionable silence.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Leia asked.

Luke traced nervous fingers over the metal cuff on his wrist. “Han, you getting hurt, everything.”  

“It’s not your fault-“ Leia started. Luke shook his head vigorously, cutting her off.

“Vader wanted me, if it wasn’t for that he never would have singled you out. Then he hurt you to draw me out. I was halfway across the galaxy and I could feel what he was doing to you.”

Dread curled in her stomach. “Luke, how?”

“The Force. I found Master Yoda, right where Ben said he would be. It wasn’t just some hypothermia-induced hallucination. He taught me to open myself to it, said it would show me things. The future and the past. I saw you and Han.”

Leia wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. Vader had focused the worst of his tortures on Han, but she hadn’t escaped unscathed. Vader was once a Jedi, he knew how Luke’s strange powers worked, probably better than Luke himself did. She hadn’t had the worry to spare for how he would ensure Luke was the one to come to their rescue. It explained the lack of questions.

“I don’t know why he thought hurting you would _ever_ convince me to join him. I won’t. I’ll die before I join him.” Luke continued, almost to himself.

“Join him?” Leia asked, even more confused.

“He said that the Emperor foresaw that I would destroy him. He wanted me to join him so we could rule the galaxy as- rule the galaxy together.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry, Leia,” The corner of his mouth ticked up in a tired, bitter grin. “I wouldn’t do it for all the power in the Empire.”

“Darth Vader asked you to help him overthrow the Emperor?”

He gave a single, slow nod.

Leia pushed herself to her feet and began to pace the narrow cabin. Three paces, turn. Three paces, turn.

Darth Vader, the Emperor’s mailed fist, was ready to turn on his master. Dissent in the Imperial ranks was something the Alliance encouraged and took advantage of at every possible opportunity. The one place they had never been able to find a rift was the Dark Lord. He was fanatically loyal to the Emperor and Empire, but they had never been able to discover what drove that loyalty. It wasn’t the money- Vader seemed to have no material vices besides torture and murder and according to Alliance slicers he had a vast fortune sitting in the Imperial banks virtually untouched. It wasn’t the power either- the Emperor often ‘loaned’ Vader’s service to whichever Moff was in favor, ordering Vader’s subservience.

But Moffs came and went. Vader endured.

Pace, pace, pace, turn. Pace, pace, pace, turn.

“I’m not going to do it.” Luke repeated after a while.

“Of course you won’t. Luke, don’t you realize what this means?”

“That Vader is a disloyal, bantha-kriffing monster? He betrayed the Jedi, he’ll betray the Emperor. He’ll betray anyone.”

“Yes,” Hope flared in her for the first time in days. “A schism between the Emperor and his right hand man.” She felt herself smile. “When High Command hears about this-“

“You’re telling Command?” Luke reached out with his right arm, forgetting, for a moment, about his hand. He saw the metal cuff on it and remembered, pulled it back and grabbed her wrist with his left. “Leia, please. You can’t. I said I wasn’t going to join him.”

“I know you wouldn’t. I have to tell Command, though.”

Seeing the distress in his eyes she sat down beside him and held his hand in both of hers.

“This might just be the most important chink in the Empire’s armor we’ve ever found. If we can encourage Vader to move against the Emperor-“

“Leia, I can’t go back to him. I can’t. I won’t.”

“I’m not asking you to.” Not yet at least, she thought grimly. Something wary and guarded entered Luke’s clear blue eyes, shadowing his usually earnest and open expression. “I don’t think you would actually join him, either. You’re a Commander, you have to understand what that kind of dissent in the Empire’s upper ranks means strategically. We have to at least let Command know about it.” Before Vader lost his nerve and the opportunity was gone. Or worse, succeeded on his own.

Luke’s grip on her hands tightened. “Okay. We’ll tell Command and see what happens from there. But I’m not going back to him. Besides, we need to rescue Han.”

“Of course.” Leia reassured him, squeezing back.

“I’m tired. I’m going to try to get some sleep before we get back to the fleet.” He pulled back and began straightening the blankets.

“Of course. I’ll leave you be.” Leia stood. She frowned slightly at the obvious ploy to get rid of her. She rested a hand on his shoulder and dropped a quick kiss on his forehead. “Things will look better in the morning.”

Luke’s eyes fluttered closed briefly, and he smiled up at her before laying back down. Leia dimmed the lights for him and closed the hatch behind her.

*

Luke waited until the sound of Leia’s footsteps retreated down the corridor, then flung his blankets off and took up her abandoned pacing. He’d spent hours after dinner trying to sit and meditate like Ben and Yoda had taught him, but his churning thoughts had driven him to fidget and fret. Anything to distract himself from the truth.

He should have told Leia everything- no, he should never have mentioned Vader’s offer at all.

He was far from the only member of the Alliance with a high-ranking Imperial relative. One of Corona Squadron’s ground crew workers was the father of a Star Destroyer captain, and there was a former Intelligence asset now training with Blue Squadron who had needed to be exfiltrated from her parents’ household in the Imperial Court after it was discovered she was passing information to the Alliance. There were others, of course, but none of them had expressed as much idolatry towards their relatives as Luke had to the ghost of Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin Skywalker, the spice freighter navigator, had been the hero of his childhood. The slave boy who had raced his way to fame and freedom, then abandoned the dull drudgery of Tatooine to walk amongst the stars like their namesake. Luke had liked to imagine him as a swashbuckling adventurer from the holoprograms that Uncle Owen had forbid him but Biggs would share anyways. His unknown offworlder mother had taken a dozen forms in those fantasies, from pirate queen to pursuing law agent to dockside tavern girl. None had felt quite right and eventually she’d faded from the imaginings, but that was okay because the mythos of Anakin Skywalker swelled to fill the void she left. As he’d gotten older the Imperial recruitment propaganda had dulled the shine of commercial transport work and his fantasies turned to outdoing his father, winning heroism at the point of a blaster and laser turret.

Learning the truth about Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi Knight, had rekindled the embers of that idolatry into a blaze. With a few words and the passing of a cold metal hilt both his childhood aspirations were combined into one. He would walk among the stars in his father’s footsteps, defeat the Empire, and rebuild the Jedi to their splendor of old. The Alliance had a fair share of Clone Wars veterans, some of whom had sought him out and shared war stories about General Skywalker, the Hero with No Fear. Even Chancellor Mothma had shared a story about him, one sleepless night in the mess hall aboard Home One.

None of them had known the truth. Luke took some solace in that. He wasn’t the only one duped. Maybe he should tell them, get it all out in the open before it could fester into a shameful secret for Vader to force out, cutting him off from the Alliance.

He’d left Tatooine and the life he’d known with nothing but the Death Star plans and the clothes on his back, and he’d lost the clothes in the mad-dash evacuation of Yavin IV. Everything he owned was Alliance issue except his lightsaber, which was now equally lost. Everything before that was burned to a crisp with his aunt and uncle. The only family he had left was the Alliance, and Han and Chewie. Except Han was gone as well. If the Alliance abandoned him, what would he have left? He tried to imagine life without Han’s sarcastic teasing, Wedge’s easy camaraderie, Wes’s pranks. Hobbie and Tycho and whatever remnants of other squadrons that had survived the slaughter on Hoth. Leia’s quiet comfort and the way they could talk about nearly anything. His forehead tingled where she had kissed him earlier.

Could he risk losing all that, or risk being shut out of the operation to rescue Han while his loyalty was reassessed?

Han.

The smuggler had only stuck around so long for _him._ He could have repaid Jabba a dozen times over if he hadn’t kept hanging around to keep an eye on Luke. He’d lost count of the times the older man had pulled him out of one misadventure or another. It was his turn to be the rescuer now, not the rescued.

Yes, he would tell everyone the truth after Han was rescued. He wasn’t sure Han would still want him around after he found out the truth, but at least the damage his father had done in Luke’s name would be atoned for.

_His father his father his father._

_Ben, why didn’t you tell me?_

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [tumblr](http://justanorthernlight.tumblr.com/)


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